Another busy week for the indefatigable John Prescott, the new professor of climate change at Xiamen University in China. The former deputy PM is now bidding to save the planet from ecological catastrophe through his latest campaign newearthdeal.org. And indeed who can blame him for taking on something comparatively easy, after months trying to get Labour re-elected for a fourth time. As part of his personal commitment, Prescott told the Observer, he will be installing solar panels on his roof. But hang on a minute! We're sure we recall seeing solar panels on the mock-turrets of Prescott's Hull home. That was in 2005, when eight Greenpeace protesters climbed his roof to install two panels and unveil a banner reading: "Oi, 2Jags! Hit targets, not voters!". Greenpeace, it turns out, don't think they ever got the panels back. Could they still be lurking in the Prescott garage, under a rusty Jag that's been propped up on bricks in favour of a fleet of Priuses? "John hasn't got the panels," says a spokesman. "As far as we know the police took them away as evidence. He is getting solar panels fitted and paying for them out of his own pocket." We ask Humberside police. They drop everything and promise to find them. Finally, after another rummage, Greenpeace call back to say they think they do have the panels after all, and offer to go back to finish the job. Given that the eight were convicted of using threatening behaviour, a source concedes this is "probably not very likely".

It's not often we help out the Mail on Sunday, but dang it, this is important. The newspaper at the weekend devoted most of two full pages to a scoop which its so-called rivals, to their shame, had missed. (Declaration of interest: the Observer, owned by Guardian News and Media, didn't have a sniff of it. Rubbish.) Turns out that at a recent garden party at Buckingham Palace (well, in June, but near enough) the Duke of Edinburgh remarked to a guest, who had revealed he was a designer and who had a goatee: "Well you didn't design your beard too well, did you?" Hilarious! Close reading of the piece revealed that the paper had not, in fact, spoken to the offended goatee-wearer, but had based the story on someone who had overheard the prince say it, or say something along those lines, or so they think. The paper appealed to Beardy, unnamed among the 8,000 present at Buckingham Palace that day, to make himself known. The monarchy duly trembled. Now, as everyone knows, designers with goatees (and MacBook Airs and macchiatos) do not read the Mail on Sunday. They read the Guardian. Because it is so cool. And so we are happy to repeat the MoS's appeal to the individual who suffered such an egregious insult. Get in touch, badgerface. A story this important deserves to be told from the horse's whiskery mouth.

Knowing how much you all enjoyed last week's Diary Book of the Week, we offer a submission for this week's title. OK, so the self-publishing imprint Pomegranate Press may not be the best-known of the nation's book publishers, but Kizzie French's "exhilarating debut novel" Blueprint would seem to have plenty in it to enthral. There's an architecture-obsessed aristo called the Duke of Mercia, who is planning a new town in the west of England called Charlesbury – why Kizzie, where do you get your inspiration? – and a young, sassy lady architect who really, really wants the gig. Alas, it's not really family reading ("To his discomfort, what stuck in his mind … was not her architectural credentials but that wonderful pair of legs") and the Diary, as you know, is a filth-free zone. But we can't help being charmed by the conclusion, where the duke tells his new architect: "You'll create a townscape which respects tradition, I'm confident of that – but there'll be a new spirit at work that's going to make Charlesbury a byword for imaginative architecture." Cheering stuff.